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Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx's Radical Dream by [Justin Trask Haskins]

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Justin Trask Haskins

Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx's Radical Dream Kindle Edition

by Justin Trask Haskins (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The greatest threat facing the United States today doesn’t come from China, Iran, or even Russia; it’s the growing number of Americans who believe Karl Marx’s socialism provides the best strategy for making our communities safer, healthier, and more prosperous. But the most significant danger posed by socialism isn’t that its implementation would lead to greater poverty and fewer property rights, it’s that socialism would create numerous moral problems, including the limits it would place on individual liberty and religious freedom.

In Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx’s Radical Dream, conservative columnist and think tank research fellow Justin Haskins examines the moral perils of Marx’s socialism and explains why if socialism were to be imposed in its fullest form, it wouldn’t just damage people’s freedoms, it would obliterate them. Haskins argues it would be dangerous to attempt to create Marx’s utopian socialist world, and even more importantly, that such an attempt would be so highly immoral that it could reasonably be called “evil.”

In Socialism Is Evil, Haskins makes the moral case against socialism and also describes in detail what socialists believe, the differences between socialism and communism, why Marx’s socialism will never be completely adopted, and why even the more moderate European-style socialism, called “democratic socialism” by some, is highly immoral and anti-American.

Many socialists are kind, generous people with good intentions, but sometimes, good intentions can create devastating results. Socialism Is Evil briefly tackles some of the most important moral controversies surrounding Marx’s socialism, providing supporters of individual liberty with the tools they need to stop the rise of socialism in its tracks.

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107 pages
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Publication date

September 1, 2018
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"Hopefully, the brevity of this outstanding book will inspire many Millennials who do not understand the true horrors of socialism. ... Although Socialism Is Evil is very concise, it needs to be read with total concentration to fully comprehend the scope of evil socialism implements on a society. Haskins concludes with this penetrating statement: 'Whatever problems exist in a capitalist society, they pale in comparison to the moral tragedies that must accompany Marx's socialism, which is why it should be avoided at all costs. To do otherwise would be to perpetuate a great injustice on the free peoples of the world.'" -Jay Lehr, Ph.D., science director of The Heartland Institute and author of more than 1,000 book reviews.

About the Author

Justin Haskins is currently the executive editor of The Heartland Institute, one of the nation's leading free-market think tanks. Justin graduated summa cum laude from the University of Richmond in 2010 and from Regent University in 2011 with an M.A. in government with a focus on international relations. Haskins finished his second M.A. from Regent University, this time in journalism, in 2015. Haskins has been published hundreds of times in major American publications, including U.S. News and World Report, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes, TheBlaze, New York Post, Reason.com, and many others. Haskins' work has also been featured by numerous media outlets, including Fox News, New York Times, and the Glenn Beck Radio Program

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07GRHZCPR
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Henry Dearborn Institute for Liberty; 1st edition (September 1, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 691 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 107 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0999735527

Best Sellers Rank: #506,190 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #234 in Communism & Socialism (Kindle Store)
- #996 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #1,414 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism

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Justin Trask Haskins

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Justin Haskins is a widely published writer and political commentator and the editorial director and research fellow at The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank. Haskins is also the editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com, one of the world’s largest and most influential publications devoted to challenging socialism.

Haskins writes a column for FoxNews.com, serves as a contributor to The Hill and Townhall, and has appeared on television and radio more than 200 times, on shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, and the Glenn Beck Program.

Haskins is the author of the Amazon best-selling book Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx’s Radical Dream (2018), and he served as the first contributor to Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Socialists (2020), a New York Times best-selling book.

Haskins has been published more than 800 times in major digital and print publications, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Forbes, Newsweek, and National Review, among many others. His writing has also been featured or discussed by The Rush Limbaugh Show, Glenn Beck Radio Program, The New York Times, Drudge Report, The Heritage Foundation, the White House, and Newsmax, which named Haskins one of “Top 30 Republicans Under 30” in 2017. In 2016, Haskins was named to MediaDC’s “30 Under 30” list of young and influential leaders on the right.

Haskins is author or co-author of three Heartland Policy Briefs, all of which received significant media attention: “The American Health Care Plan” (2021), “Estimating the Income Tax Hikes Required to Pay for Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Plan” (2019) and “Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth: An Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden” (2019).

Haskins has also co-authored several national surveys conducted by Rasmussen Reports, one of America’s leading pollsters.

Haskins graduated from the University of Richmond (Richmond, VA) in 2010. In 2011, Justin earned his M.A. in government with specializations in international relations and American government from Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA), and he earned a second M.A., this time in journalism, from Regent in 2015. Haskins was inducted into the Philadelphia Society in 2018.

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S. Wedel

a good intro

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 8, 2020

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"Socialism Is Evil" gives a good introduction to the subject of socialism. Whereas most books on the subject focus mainly on the economic realities of a socialistic system, this short and easy-to-read title focuses also on the effect socialism has on the values destroyed and the values enforced by a socialistic system -- and makes the point that those values may be such that not everyone wants to embrace them. Because socialism is advocated today in the U.S. by those (e.g., college professors, politicians) whose values are already in sync with socialistic values, and who aren't presenting both the pros and the cons of socialistic systems, or the fact that socialism and communism are closely related systems, or that no country in history has ever flourished under a socialistic system (in fact, most have ended in economic shambles (e.g., Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, to name some), this book is an important introduction to the realities of how socialism and democracy differ. This makes it an important read for those who are not aware of the differences. That is especially true for the inexperienced young people who have been taught that socialism means everything is free and equal. Get this book for anyone you know who is willing to read a short presentation of "the rest of the story," which we are not hearing about in the way socialism is pushed for in the U.S.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 6, 2020

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I first want to exclaim how glad I am that the writer is criticizing "real" (Marxist) socialism and not what happened in places like North Korea and Venezuela, which are labelled as "communist" and "socialist" when they are far from it. However this book makes some assumptions that are not always true. For example, they present that competition is inherent in human nature, when we indeed were communal hunter-gatherers for practically all of our existence. We do have competitive spirit, but one major difference between us and others of the animal kingdom is that we can work together at a macroscopic level. There are examples of this with some animals, such as the ant colony and beehive, but if you look at a group of cats, they will most likely not work cooperatively for a common interest. They also say that under the direct horizontal democracy of socialism some groups of people will be forced to comply with something against their belief-such as Hindus believing against the killing of cows-when they do not have to participate in the direct killing of cows. This argument is also irrelevant because unless society as a whole is against the killing of cows, cows can and will still be killed. As long as religious freedom is established and enforced, these Hindus can practice their religion in peace without worrying about being forced to slaughter a cow. However, the writer does come up with some good points on why marxist socialism (which is less broad than just general socialism; that is when the workers simply own the means of production, distribution, and exchange) and especially communism are not optimized for modern society such as that of the US.

[Note: this review should be taken with a grain of salt, (as everything online should be lol) because it was written by an anarcho-syndicalist middle-schooler]

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Wikileaker

Capitalism is evil, too !!!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2019

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This is really a two and a half star book at best, but I'm feeling generous today. I actually agree that socialism is evil, but so is every other system of social organization. Applying to socialism (in paraphrase) what Churchill said about democracy: "socialism is the very worst system, except for all others". The very same can be said about capitalism, more on this below.

The first thing wrong with this book is that it almost entirely attacks classical Marxist socialism. Haskins states this up front. This is a straw man argument. By now everybody understands that Marxism doesn't work; that is, anybody who remembers the collapse of the USSR. Gorbachev wasn't a dumb guy, and he was a committed Marxist. He had to dissolve the regime because they tried to make it work and it was a futile effort. Perhaps Reagan's defense buildup accelerated its demise by forcing the USSR to maintain unsustainable levels of military spending, but the USSR was doomed long before Reagan came along. The book is so concentrated on criticizing an helpless enemy that it is essentially useless.

This book is touted as being unique because it does not argue that socialism doesn't work (as most conservative-libertarian writers do), but rather makes a "moral case" against socialism that it offends the modern (enlightenment) notion of human dignity. That is, socialism necessarily demands draconian enforced limits on freedom. This is actually not a new idea, people! Read your history; you will find that this is exactly what Churchill argued against his socialist rivals for the P.M. office in the years following WW2.

Haskins makes the point that under socialism some people are compelled to go along with government policies that go against their moral convictions. This is why socialism is immoral. This argument too is nothing new. People who must live together in a society (or a particular place, or any other organization) have always had to make compromises in order to get along harmoniously. This is a necessary condition for any group of humans who must co-exist together. Perhaps what he is saying that under socialism this stricture is inordinately severe. Unfortunately he does not spend alot of effort making this case. Just because some people in society will object to the popular will is evidence enough that socialism is immoral, and that's that. Weak case.

Haskins spends a few pages criticizing the so-called "European socialism" (aka "democratic socialism" among those who do not understand what democracy is or where it came from) as practiced in countries like Germany and France. But he explains that he's not going to criticize those systems explicitly; rather he goes on to criticize specific programs and policies -- principally the single-payer (national government) health care systems (this applies to the UK and Canada as well). The problems inherent in socialized medicine are well known, so this is all well and good but quite a timid approach. As well, Haskins doesn't mention the problems with it peculiar to Canada (which admittedly is not a european country, geographically at least), namely, that the h.c. system north of the border continues only because Canadians must travel to the good o' U.S. of A for the care their own system cannot give.

Haskins neglects the so-called "Nordic socialism" that prevails in Norway, Sweden, Denmark etc.. An even stronger case against socialism can be made here. The two most obvious arguments: 1) comparing these countries against the USA is comparing apples and oranges. The Nordic countries have populations under 10 million, and their populations are very nearly homogenous (same race, religion, language, culture). Transplanting Nordic socialism to the "multicultural" USA, with its long turbulent social history, is such an impossibility that the notion is ridiculous. 2) the Nordic countries are, in all the important categories, hardly leaders in western civilization. No technological innovations have come from the Nordics; they in fact have been "free riding" on American research & development for the past, oh, forever! The only exceptions that come to mind are Volvo cars (now owned by the Chinese, if you can believe that!) , and Nokia in Finland (and now they don't even make their own phones, they licensed Android!). About the only bright light remaining in europe's far north is Sweden's Saab (maker of the Gripen fighter jet (with a turbofan engine supplied by General Electric)). Nope, Nordic socialism has only produced a welfare state that hobbles their few productive citizens. Haskins is right about them but doesn't make the case in this book.

The above (pertaining to the Nordics) can be said to some extent of the larger european countries France and UK. Their populations are under 67 million each (Germany's is 83 million), and despite recent influxes of middle easterners, are well near homogeneous demographically and culturally (though nowhere near so much as the Nordics). Let's be aware that most of their immigrants are from the other european nations. Let's also keep in mind these countries unlike America have suffered severe terrorist attacks in recent years (no surprise). Also: these economies are less than competitive than they should be (except Germany, see below), and the most available reason would be their socialist policies which hinder their most productive citizens, as with the Nordics, but to a somewhat lesser extent. (one major exception I will admit is the Airbus consortium which is competitive with Boeing, but only with big socialistic government subsidies).

As for Germany, which is a leader in high tech manufacturing (most prominently in automobiles and industrial equipment), no one has made the case that her success is due to socialism or in spite of socialism. Further, German corporations are just as ruthless in their outsourcing to low-wage developing countries (notably China) as their American counterparts, and this goes far to explaining German economic success.

So this book gets three stars at best. It's not bad but it's not real good either. Maybe someone new to the debate would feel more enthusiastic about it that this reviewer.

Now, about capitalism. Yep, for all its warts, it is the best system. At least so far. Those of you who have read Marx will remember that this is exactly what he wrote, too! So nothing really new there. The real question is: can mankind devise a system of human organization that is better, with fewer flaws and more fairness ??? I won't go into that here, but the fact is that capitalism too is an evil system. And anyone who disagrees, just refer to Peter Joseph's three Zeitgeist films, and his book on the New Human Rights Movement.

The real issue is the one that George Orwell made the central theme of his monumental 1984: p-o-w-e-r. Lord Acton said it succinctly: Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. And its corollary: Power Corrupts. Any system of human organization, capitalism, socialism, or anything else, has to deal with the central fact of anthropology: the dominance hierarchy. Somebody (or some tiny coterie of power elites) always comes out on top, get corrupted by the power going to his fat little head, and tyrannizes the common people for his own gain and/or satisfaction. Philosophers throughout all human history, at least as far back as Plato and Aristotle, have dealt with this issue. So to treat the matter thoroughly, this author should go on and write Capitalism is Evil. Judging from this book, I don't think he's capable of it. Too bad for us seekers of wisdom...keep looking for a better author/thinker.

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Top reviews from other countries

Jeff Tillett

Excellent short essay.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 5, 2019

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Should be on the reading list (compulsory) for all Politics and or Sociology undergraduate courses. It would be a wise choice of literature all so for all well intentioned but profoundly deluded "Marxist" Corbynistas. Socialism is Evil. The moral case is very well stated.....if it ever needed to be.

Customer

Proves what it Asserts

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on July 3, 2020

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This book is a refreshing approach to the alleged evils of socialism. It doesn't re-iterate what usual arguments are often put forward. Rather than taking into consideration the history of socialism or economic considerations, this book has tried to prove socialism to be evil strictly on moral grounds.

Miklos Roth

Socialism is evil

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on August 21, 2019

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Great book! The problem with those Evil socialists, they will never read a logical book like this, because they don’t know what it means logic, common sense and hate history!

One person found this helpful

Kindle Customer

A Worthwhile Read

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on January 22, 2020

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A sharp, clear and easy to read rebuttal explaining how Socialism violates basic human nature and requires great acts of evil to begin and continue. A very solid read.

Peter Neaum

Socialism

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on February 8, 2019

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I did not think the case argued was convincing. There are many other reasons to fear socialism.

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